In and Against the Brexit Regime: Notes From a Week of Migrants` Struggles

In the past two months, a right-wing acceleration of political processes took the name of “Brexit”; in parallel, and almost as a counterpart to this, in the past few weeks a different kind of politics emerged from the workplaces and the real-life of refugees struggles. The geography is these struggles is one defined by resistance to the violence of borders, controls, state-sponsored repression and business-oriented racism. Deliveroo, Byron Burgers, Calais, Ventimiglia, and Heathrow: a line connects those names, a new map of struggles materialising the inequality within and beyond Brexit.
#NoOneIsIllegal: Solidarity picket for migrant workers deported BoycottByronBurgers

On the 4th of July, undocumented workers in Byron Burgers restaurants across London were called in for a “training day”. The health and safety meeting turned into an immigration raid when, upon arrival, the workers were met by UKBA (immigration officials) for questioning. 35 workers were detained, to be deported. Before this, these workers were working 60 hour weeks for Byron.

Byron Burgers are content to exploit undocumented workers when it suits them, but as soon as it becomes inconvenient, will subject them to deportation, ruining their lives. And while their company is collaborating with the Home Office to deport people, Corporate Watch has found that the owners of Byron are siphoning millions of pounds offshore.

After demos where called in London, Manchester and Leeds, the Edinburgh based Migrant Solidarity Network, together with other groups, decided to join the protest with two days of action in the Scottish capital.

The Migrants’ Solidarity Network is an Edinburgh based campaign platform organising solidarity actions to support migrant’s rights. It was created one year ago from the initiative of a group of Spanish Women part of the group Oficina Precaria de Edimburgo and other migrants groups active in defending migrant workers’ rights against exploitation and racism. Since then the network has grown. It has become a coalition of groups and individuals meeting every month and providing a space for migrants from many different countries to share their experiences and organise solidarity and support.

On the 5th of August the Tribe of Moles joined Migrant Solidarity Network and several other groups to besiege the North Bridge Edinburgh branch of Byron Burgers. We managed to surround the entrance for an hour and a half distributing leaflets inside and outside the shop following the same strategies that successfully have enabled groups like Solfed Brighton and IWW Leeds/Bradford to win significant victories in the hospitality sector.

A second picket took place at the Byron on Lothian Road at 1 pm on the 13th August. Prevented by management from entering the store, we chanted and leafleted along the shop front for two hours- During the picket the store was nearly empty with lots of customers leaving and few customers going in. We also managed to collect tips and messages of solidarity for the workers inside.

While the protest against Byron Burgers sends a clear message of resistance to all businesses complicit with the UK deportation regime, it can also be seen to signal a new wave of migrant struggles. These are rooted in resistance to the deeply racist post-Brexit political landscape where the effect of the Immigration Act (originally a pre-Brexit concession by David Cameron to the Eurosceptics) can only be more raids, more powers of deportation, more immigration checks.

Migrant solidarity beyond borders

While the protests against Byron Burgers are continuing across the country, they are not the only signal that resistance to the criminalisation and exploitation of migrants is growing.

Looking for the border beyond the border line that separates countries as it traverses the space of the nation-state allows us to grasp the thread that connects the 5th of August protests. The exploitation and deportation of the Byron workers, the criminalisation of black communities in the UK, and the repression of migratory flows on the border between Italy and France are produced by the same liberal border regime that signifies free movement for commodities but not people.

However, if capitalist relations of differential inclusion integrate multiple forms of exploitation, repression and exploitation, they also offer us the possibility to see our struggles as interconnected – to see #NoBorder action against Fortress Europe on the European continent, and protests against exploiters of migrant labour and institutionalised racism in the UK as part of the same struggle.

Migrant workers, refugees, direct action activists and campaigners led by migrants and minority groups are creating new political subjects the edges of the institutional spectrum, far away from parliamentary politics and from mainstream media.

It is in this European context of resistance to right-wing populism and institutionalised racism that the Transnational Social Strike Platform invites workers, activists, unionists and European networks to meet again in Paris from the 21st to the 23rd of October to discuss how the social strike in France can pave the way to a transnational uprising of living labor against precarization.

The Edinburgh Migrants’ Solidarity Network next organising meeting is on Friday 9 September 6.30pm at the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh.

Jack Collatin
2 years ago

nick
2 years ago

first they came for the migrants… etc either we all have human rights or none of us do…did you see the french police force a women to remove her hijab in the (rotten) grauniad or the torture used by australia to punish migrants? or the heavily armed police they are introducing across london and then the rest of the uk (not in scotland i assure you) – we have been encouraged to go up to these paramilitaries and tell them how ‘secure’ they make us feel!!!!

Jack Collatin
2 years ago

And a BBC News Where You Are ‘investigation’ reveals that Roma immigrants are ‘happy’ to work for £3 an hour. That’s as deep as their intrepid sleuth got on this terrible situation.
A whole 37 seconds worth of SNP BAD shit.

OurWelfare
2 years ago

People seem to care so little about migrants. Believing every lie they hear about them being criminals or thieves or heaven knows what. The fact that Byron knowingly hired them as ‘illegal’ workers to deliberately overwork and underpay them is continuously ignored – yet the migrants alleged illegal status is used to attack and blame them for everything – from homelessness, lack of jobs and every economic woe around. Few people realise that although arrested by UKBA, many migrants are not breaking any laws, but are deported before they can get hold of (scarce) legal representation to prove that. Employers, UKBA, the Police, the Councils, the Tory Goverment – all are acting illegally and brutally and destroying the lives of workers everywhere, yet powerless migrants are blamed. Its like we’re living in a twilight world where false is true and true is false. I only hope the Migrants Solidarity Network gains support from non-migrants as wherever people are from we need protection from bosses who will destroy us for their own profit, regardless of our “legal status”.